To our foreign
correspondents
Dear Comrades,
This is to inform you that we are organising a National Assembly in Milan "against federalism and secession", and to describe the meaning behind this initiative.
We have been saying for years that the Lega Nord (Northern League) of Bossi, as well as the various other "leagues" in the south of Italy, do not represent a passing trend but the inevitable outcome at a bourgeois level of the economic, social and political marasma into which Italian capitalism is sinking. Although its origins naturally lie in the "particular" nature of the crisis in Italy, this development has taken place only because this particularity is an integral part of the interlocking and unequal mechanism of international capitalism. It is not only Italy Ltd. that has reached this point: the same is true of the entire development of imperialism, which is once again coming to grips with an explosion of the antagonism between productive forces and private appropriation. Its reaction represents the dual need to restructure the world capitalist order in an increasingly centralised manner (economically and at State level), and divide the working class in the heart of the metropoli in order to set its various sectors in competition with each other under the lash of the global market. In Italy, as well as in other imperialist countries such as Belgium, Canada and Spain, where the State and its national bourgeois class are incapable of developing such a system of centralisation or destroying the organisational and fighting unity of the working class, political and geographical secession has become the only means whereby local bourgeoisies and the international capitalist system can hope to break the proletariat, gather the various "pieces" behind their own banners and conservatively concentrate (around other poles) their economic and political power.
Despite their reactionary bourgeois nature, the Leagues and the concept of secession are acquiring growing and even militant support among the proletariat because of the combined effects of capitalist globalisation and the multiple inheritance of Stalinism. We are by now on the brink of (even armed) conflict between the different territorial sections of the working class in Italy, which risks becoming a new and more devastating Yugoslavia in the very heart of Europe: a frightening backward step not only for the proletariat here, but also for the international proletariat as a whole. The working class cannot stop this headlong rush towards the abyss by rallying behind the (equally "Balkanising") flags of federalism or the defence of the nation-state: it can only do it by rebuilding its antagonistic class unity against world capitalism and all of the bourgeois elements in Italy within the context of international socialism. This is a unity that cannot be won in the backwater of Italy, or some of its regions or cities, but only on an international battlefield and in strict association with the recreation of the international and internationalist struggle of the world proletariat.
As we have said, the Balkanisation of the Italian working class is in fact one of the elements of the global offensive by means of which the capitalist system is seeking to "balkanise" the international proletariat. In Italy, as well as elsewhere, there is only one way in which the working class can avoid being crushed: it must oppose capitalist globalisation by globalising its own organisation and struggle. The capitalist system itself is actually laying the foundations for such a development because of its exaltation of the ties of interdependence between the various sections of the world proletarian army and the immediate struggles it is calling them to face - from Latin America to Europe and the Far East. But these objective impulses can only be channelled in the right direction if Communists feed the sparks of consciousness released by these struggles and concretely work towards the reconstruction of the political ties of the world proletariat and, in the future, the International Communist Party.
OCI is trying to act in strict coherence with this need by beginning with its task of organising a class battle against the current disintegration of the working class in Italy. The National Assembly is part of this work. Its aim is to call upon all of the energies of a proletariat ready, willing and able to respond to this new bourgeois attack by coming together in a united manner and positioning itself on the only line possible: the fraternisation of the Italian proletariat beyond the bourgeois "national" and "micro-national" fronts that are attempting to kindle the flames of a conflict between them, and the transformation of these conflicts into a class war in Italy and elsewhere.
We are asking you to participate in this initiative in whatever way you feel to be most appropriate: by sending us written contributions or by physically attending the Assembly itself. The meeting will take place in Milan on Saturday 17 May: the exact time and place will be announced in the next few days.
We look forward to receiving your replies and, in the meantime, send you our most fraternal Communist greetings.